(ANS) -- Restoring the towns and villages of Kosovo to stable, peaceful communities may seem an overwhelming task at this juncture, but by breaking down the peacemaking process into small, practical tasks related to everyday life, a group of mediators hopes to resolve conflict at the local level.
Leaving security issues and infrastructure rebuilding to NATO and the international community, a nonprofit group called Conflict Resolution Catalysts will focus on improving people-to-people relations by providing information on housing and jobs, mediating between residents and service providers, and simply listening to people's stories.
Recruiting and fund-raising for the Community Facilitators Project in Kosovo begins this month, said Gary Shapiro, who founded the Vermont-based group in 1987 and is now director of planning and development. Shapiro said teams of facilitators, comprising three local and one international member, will work out of five regional community centers in Kosovo.
Combining the roles of psychologist, social worker, mediator and information gatherer, the facilitators will help Kosovars begin to piece their lives together where they first fell apart -- in their neighborhoods.
"What does peace-building mean?" Shapiro asked in an interview shortly after his return from a recent trip to Kosovo. "It has to do with neighbors interacting with each other; sustainable, viable communities; improving the economic situation, looking at the various, little ways communities function, the day-to-day stuff. When you look at that, then you start coming up with a lot of specific areas that can be addressed.
Gary Shapiro talking with refugees in Tetovo, Macedonia"We never think in terms of 'Oh, we're going to get Serbs and Albanians to start trusting each other,'" he explained. Using a word like "reconciliation" sends some people running in the opposite direction and angers others, he said. Rather, facilitators will ask the question, "What are the needs that everyone can relate to?"
The group learned that lesson in Bosnia. Between 1994 and 1997, CRC created a series of community centers in Sarajevo and Banja Luka in the Serb Republic that offered educational and social programs to anyone in need. Youth and women's groups, community media including a youth-run radio station and newspaper, computer and language training and peer mediation workshops were offered to men and women of all ages and ethnicities.
The centers were established in converted homes to give people a sense of safety and comfort. Local facilitators of all ethnicities who are familiar with the complexities of the Balkan crisis team up with coordinators from America, Russia and Canada who offer a measure of safety as well as technical skills. Negotiating the legal system, credit availability and computer software don't have the drama of a peace accord but may in the long run be as significant to an enduring truce, proponents say.
Gary Shapiro discusing camp administration at Spitalla refugee camp near Durres, Albania
"The achievements of the project are on a small scale but still significant," wrote Columbian journalist Lina Maria Holguin, who interviewed CRC facilitators in Bosnia. "The aim of the project is not to give people solutions but rather to allow them to search for solutions themselves."
Today, said Shapiro, the centers in Bosnia and Serbia are independent and self-sustaining and support a core group of locals who, rather than passively watching the government determine their future, are genuinely engaged in building democracy from the bottom up.
"The whole political structure didn't change but I think we assisted people in organizing themselves, forming nongovernmental organizations and finding an alternative way to deal with their needs -- not being so reliant on the government," he said.
The goal in Kosovo is similar. Giving returning Kosovars a voice in what happens to them is essential, Shapiro said, and convincing them to emerge from an identity of victimization will not be so easy. Many Bosnians simply rebuffed CRC's advances, preferring and expecting others to do the work of rebuilding society. Finding people willing to question the status quo, to take risks and get involved, was difficult, especially among the adult population.
So CRC turned to young people. More energetic than their elders, flexible in their attitudes and usually single, young people have proved tremendously open to the kind of innovative approach to conflict resolution that CRC advocates.
"They engage a young group of people that are quite idealistic and committed," says Nevin Orange, program officer for CARE Canada that partnered with CRC in Bosnia to deliver social care programs and trauma counseling. "The people who come out are prepared to work under (difficult) conditions and rise to the challenge." Their work was so good, in fact, that CARE Canada has hired away several former CRC employees.
Kosovo facilitators will be given a 20-day intensive training in the dynamics of conflict, grassroots peace-building strategies, communication and problem- solving skills, and a background in Balkan history and culture. Participants pay for the training but are given a stipend and free housing once overseas.
Like many small nonprofits, CRC's budget is bare-bones, which attracts dedicated workers but makes long-term planning difficult. A television advertising campaign for the center in Banja Luka, for example, had to be canceled for lack of funding. Fewer people have made use of the centers ever since. Shapiro says he'd prefer that his group be a little less lean and his group's work considerably more accepted. The general public and policy makers do not take very seriously the work of building the foundations for social reconciliation through discussion and action groups, or community media and classes in democracy, he said.
"We're still considered fringe, idealistic. Long-term peace-building stuff is a little fuzzy for people. We still have a ways to go before we have a place at the table."
Mieke H. Bomann is a staff writer for The American News Service.
Contacts:
Nevin Orange, program officer, CARE Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, 613-228- 5600.
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